Once upon a time many many years ago, in a land far away, companies used to select their managers, senior managers and Boards of Directors in one of four or five ways.....
1. You worked your way up from the floor, or from being an office boy, you demonstrated technical competence along the way, which is why you continued to rise. People knew you, your character was very much on display for your bosses and co-workers to see. You continued to rise because you were judged to be competent, perhaps even more gifted than others, but people knew you were not a sh1t.
2. You were in the army/navy/airforce with the current bosses. You may have demonstrated some competence, but people had observed you for three or four years, perhaps even under fire, and they knew you shared their values and that you were not a sh1t.
3. You went to a public (ie private in Americanese) school with your current bosses. They knew you, or their younger brother knew you. Your competence may have been in doubt, but anyway, your classmates vouched that you were not a sh1t.
4. You went to the same university as your bosses. While you might have ***** your bosses girlfriend at the time, your tutors and lecturers vouched that you were not a sh1t.
5. You are related to your boss, or the younger son of an Earl, or a member of an exclusive club, and daddy makes a phone call. Chances are he will vouch that you are not a sh1t.
In those days we didn't hire from the opposition, because a man who will leave his employer and go to a competitor to get ahead is being disloyal, and will be disloyal to you in turn.
Those are the standards I grew up with, and broadly speaking, they were exclusionary, racist, snobbish, discriminatory and undoubtedly kept some good people from getting ahead, just because they didn't "talk proper".
But they did have one advantage over the current system.......they kept sh1ts out of management positions.
But in todays world of scientific management this just won't do will it? It's unfair, inequitable, inefficient, and of course highly discriminatory isn't it?
So today we hire into management on one concept merit. And this is the fly in the ointment, because some people with great "merit" are sh1ts, and nobody tests for the sh1t factor. In fact, testing to see if someone is a sh1t is illegal. To put it another way, management "qualifications', a lot of sucking up ("I would really like to be part of this exciting and wonderful organisation you yourself have created"), little or no experience (for some would see experience in certain fields as contamination, they want impressionable young minds on which to inflict their "new management culture") - I've been caught that way once myself.
What do I mean by a sh1t? Basically it means an industrial psychopath - which is not to say that such a person is not highly intelligent and hardworking, they are - but they don't do at least one thing - empathy, and thus they have no scruples about doing whatever it takes to climb the management tree, from sucking up to the boss to administratively "knifing" a co-worker/competitor for advancement. They have no scruples and no shame.
The symptoms of having one of these in a senior position in an organisation is at least two or three of the following.
1. Good managers leaving in droves, often with great bitterness as the psychopaths arrange things to take the credit for their hard work, but leave them carrying responsibility for any failures.
2. Proliferating layers of management as in "Executive General Managers", "Group General managers" and so on. These layers will be exclusively populated by the same type of person since industrial psychopaths love being sucked up to and are not averse to sucking up themselves.
3.Bizarre human relations disasters. These are not perceived as such by the management for they cannot empathise. Here are three examples
(a) Management demanding and expediting deep cost cutting exercises, yet at Christmas the "Senior Management Team" are given presents of cases of $150 a bottle wine by the Chairman. The staff get an email and a new diary.
(b) Management screaming and crying all year about the need to cut costs and how uncertain the future of the company is - demanding redundancies and yet more savings. The company then announces record profits.
(c) Management calling the staff "dinosaurs" and "Legacy employees" and suchlike, yet their annual report and mission statement proudly states "Our most important resource are our staff."
I could go on....
The net result is poisonous industrial relations, a disengaged workforce and eventual collapse because the management, intent on their own advancement and being unable to empathise with their own staff keep sending out the "meta message" (the message you send when you don't think you are sending a message) that you little people don't matter in the scheme of things - which is a mistake, because one pilot, mechanic or cabin crew can undo your company's reputation in a heartbeat, and there is nothing you can do about it, nor will you even know it's happened until it's too late.